Inclusive Education

Perspectives on pedagogy, policy and practice

Zeta Brown, Zeta Brown, Zeta Williams-Brown

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781138913899
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317429258
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Inclusive education is complex, multi-faceted and ever-changing and to date there has been no fixed definition of what is meant by the term 'inclusion', leading to confusion about what inclusive education actually means in practice.

This key text introduces readers to the underlying knowledge and wider complexities of inclusion and explores how this can relate to practice. Considering inclusion as referring to all learners, it surveys the concept of inclusive practice in its broadest sense and examines its implementation in a variety of educational institutions.

Throughout the book, international contributors consider this broader concept to critically evaluate the realities of practically implementing inclusive objectives. Each chapter assesses key theories and concepts alongside a range of examples to encourage students to think critically and reappraise their own experience as learners.

Key topics covered include:

• studying the definition of inclusion

• the relevance of pedagogy in inclusive practice
• how to lead and manage for inclusion
• the issue of inclusion in early years, primary, secondary and post-16 settings
• inclusive practice for families

• international perspectives on inclusive practice.

Fully illustrated with tasks, case studies, discussion questions and recommended reading, Inclusive Education is essential reading for second and third year students looking to extend their research and writing, and to develop their critical and reflective thinking.

Part I The wider complexities of inclusive practice

1 Inclusion Defining definitions

Alan Hodkinson and Philip Vickerman

DOI: 10.4324/9781315691152-1

Introduction

Special education over the last 25 years has been subject to major advances, not least in the development of inclusive education, and inclusion has become the new orthodoxy. ‘Inclusion’ is a high-status buzzword that has acquired international currency within educational and social policy initiatives. To some it is an uncomplicated concept: a bedrock to equality in learning communities where all pupils are welcomed and valued by all people, at all times for all that they do. It is important to recognise, though, that whilst inclusion might have a commonly accepted theory, its operation has varied at differing times and in different contexts. In theory, inclusion might appear straightforward, but in the harsh reality of educational practice it is not an uncomplicated ideological construct. The question that has come to dominate educational discourse and praxis is what is this ‘inclusion’ of which we all speak?

This chapter analyses the ‘politico-philosophical’ and ‘co-construction of contemporary meaning and values’ that ground the term ‘inclusion’. Dictionary definitions are employed to provide a theoretical lens for the analysis of inclusion policy and its associated discourse. We aim to reframe inclusion with its associated ‘expertism’ and to disrupt the ‘decidability within texts’ that have plagued attempts to operationalise inclusive education (Allan, 2008: 71).

Individual/group task

Before you commence reading the next section, consider how you would define inclusion and inclusive education. What children and young adults would or indeed should be included in mainstream classrooms? At the end of this chapter, you may wish to revisit your definitions. You will need to employ your definition of inclusion to fulfil the task laid out in Chapter 7 of this book.

Definitions of ‘inclusion'

Let us commence with the Oxford English Dictionary. It observes inclusion operating within a triumvirate of meaning (Hodkinson, 2012). First, it may be employed as a singular noun, the object in a sentence. Here the object, a person or thing, is included into an environment. For example, ‘the pastel study of a little boy was included as an exhibition in an art gallery’. Second, inclusion may be the noun of the Many. In such formulations, it is the process of including or of being included within and by the group. Third, inclusion may be defined as a geological composite. In this formulation, distinct and distinctive particles become incorporated within an amalgam of rock. These three types of meaning place inclusion upon a continuum, blurring the distinction between object and process. Being inclusive ‘forces’ the location and participation of the chosen one; in becoming inclusive, the Many control a process of inclusion, and to have become inclusive involves the symbiotic relationship between the individual identity of the included and those who seek to include. Through these characterisations, it will be demonstrated how inclusion can be distilled down to an essence of the control and of controlling individual identity in schools.

Inclusion as a singular noun

In the Green Paper Excellence for All (DfEE, 1997: 44), the UK government defined inclusion as:

[seeing] more pupils with SEN included in mainstream primary and secondary schools … For example, we believe, that … children with SEN should generally take part in mainstream lessons rather than being isolated in separate units.

And in India:

all learners, young people – with or without disabilities being able to learn together in ordinary pre-school provision, schools and community educational settings with appropriate networks of support services.

(NCERT, 2006: 4)

From the late 1990s, educationalists have employed statements, such as the ones above, with an almost missionary zeal to demonstrate how governments worldwide had accepted the new orthodoxy of inclusive education. We must, though, be circumspect, noting perhaps the employment of phrases such as ‘seeing more pupils’, ‘generally take part in’ and ‘appropriate networks of support’ and question these governments’ theory of inclusion. Indeed, we might first argue that these texts reveal a reality where government did not want all children to be educated together, but rather equality could only operate if ‘appropriate’ systems and processes were in place. In addition, if we examined other definitions of inclusion from this period – for example, those which require that all pupils in a school ‘regardless of their weaknesses or disabilities should become part of the school community’ (Judge, 2003: 163) – we might question whether inclusion policy was built upon the bedrock of equality at all.

What these definitions highlight is the categorisations and language of medical deficit. We might suggest that definitions employing ‘language and categorisations’ shackle an individual’s inclusion to entrenched societal attitudes. For example, take society’s employment of the words ‘weakness’ and ‘disability’. In the context of the disability rights movement, the application of these words is both patronising and degrading to the very pupils governments were seeking to include. The employment of such terminology reveals a conceptual naivety in its operation of inclusive education.

To illustrate the point, consider this word, ‘weakness’. Imagine, if you will, the current Prime Minister, David Cameron, in a room with Professor Stephen Hawking and asked to discuss the merits of quantum physics; who then would display a weakness? This word, like ‘disability’, is subjective and bound within hierarchical societal notions of normality. Inclusion located within these literacy frameworks is culturally loaded (Hodkinson, 2015).

To further the analysis, note this comment from a teacher in a supposed ‘inclusive school’:

Sometimes it is difficult to include; children cannot always access, especially children in the learning centre here. They are not always ready to access mainstream but we always try to access areas where they can – like the assembly. They might go out for a lesson you know they are particularly good at or interested in where they can, what they can cope with and … so we do seek to put them you know in the mainstream wherever possible.

Or this comment from another teacher:

They [children labelled as SEND] have full inclusion for assemblies, playtimes and dinners so they are very much part of the school.

These comments reveal the control mechanism and object of the singular noun: teachers decide who can and who cannot be included. Interestingly, research demonstrates that, despite little or no training in special educational needs and/or disability (SEND), teachers have the responsibility for deciding who can and who cannot be included in mainstream classrooms (Hodkinson, 2009).

In this formulation, inclusion empowers decidability over definition and dominance over subordination. We might also observe how it invests power in those who are to include and how it removes power from those who are to be included. In line with art critics, this picture of inclusive practice reveals the empowerment of the ‘Grand Masters’ to become judge and jury as inclusion policy leads inclusive education to be but a gallery of the ‘best’ exhibits. Children in this characterisation are reformed as commodities, scrutinised through professionals’ notions of societal good taste. Notions of sensibility and conformity override children’s rights and social justice.

Individual/group task

Reconsider the definition of inclusion you formulated at the outset of this chapter. Carefully consider if inclusion and inclusive education should be solely controlled by teachers and educational professionals. Should inclusion only exist for those children who teachers decide are capable of being ‘successful’ in mainstream classrooms?

Inclusion as a noun of the Many

Where all children are included as equal partners in the school community the benefits are felt by all. That is why we are committed to comprehensive and enforceable civil rights for disabled people. Our aspirations as a nation must be for all our people.

(DfEE, 1997: 5)

The participation of all pupils in the curriculum and social life of mainstream schools; the participation of all pupils in learning which leads to the highest possible level of achievement; and the participation of young people in the full range of social experiences and opportunities once they have left school.

(DfEE, 1998: 23)

Inclusion in the above statements is enshrined within the principles of social justice. Phrases such as ‘join fully’, ‘take part’, ‘equal partners’, ‘enforceable civil rights’, ‘all pupils’ and ‘participation’ create an image of an inclusion process which truly values and welcomes all into mainstream schools. However, we should pause here to reconsider these definitions and analyse how they represent inclusion as mediation. In examining the first definition closely, another elusive and more ‘slippery’ definition materialises. The employment of phrases such as ‘wherever possible’ (p. 6) and other words employed elsewhere in government discourse, such as a ‘neighbourhood of schools’, suggests that the process of inclusion was always intended to pursue a ‘twin-track system’ where segregation of some pupils in special schools was acceptable. Pupils were to be placed there but not allowed here, present in an inclusive process but absent from mainstream classrooms. In this becoming, inclusion, we suggest, is nothing more than spectacle: process over person. It could not be described as equality because the Many control a process of location and subordination of individual identity. In the second quote, inclusion is defined as a right to be extended to all children. This statement, though, seems at odds with the first, where any form of ‘exclusion’ is deemed morally indefensible. Inclusion here seemingly is not a right but becomes a duty. The pupil’s duty is to participate. This form of participation makes inclusion an obligation and not a right. Žižek’s (2009) notion of a ‘paradox of forced choice’ is useful to underpin this analysis. Inclusion...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• List of tables
• Notes on contributors
• Series editor’s preface
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part I The wider complexities of inclusive practice
• 1 Inclusion Defining definitions
• 2 Pedagogy for inclusion?
• 3 Leading and managing for inclusion
• 4 Students as core A time for change in the higher education discourse of ‘widening participation' and ‘inclusion’
• 5 Inclusive practice for families
• Part II Inclusion through the stages of learning
• 6 Inclusive practice in early childhood education
• 7 Primary teachers' perspectives on implementing the inclusion agenda
• 8 Inclusive practice in secondary education
• 9 Post-16 education and issues of inclusion
• 10 From elitist to inclusive higher education
• Part III Inclusive practice International perspectives
• 11 Diversity in Greece Equity, access and inclusion issues
• 12 Inclusion and inclusive practice in Australia
• 13 Inclusive practice in Montserrat, Caribbean Natural disaster experiences
• 14 Inclusive practice post conflict An exploration of examples from Liberia
• Index